Just when the sun was looking especially lethargic, a violent eruption left behind a vast chasm of superheated gas on the solar surface. On September 29–30, a searing filament of charged particles blasted away from the sun at more than 3 million kilometers per hour. The event left behind a scar that marks where the filament escaped into space. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image by combining two different wavelength views. Yellow highlights plasma moving along the sun’s magn...